In dandelions and fireflies, artists try to make sense of climate change

Author

Provost Professor of Art History and English, University of Southern California – Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

Disclosure statement

Kate Flint does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

But pictures like these can distance us from environmental catastrophe, turning it into something spectacular, arresting – even paralyzing. They don’t communicate the everyday impact of climate change, which is also taking place in our own backyards.

In the book I’m currently writing, I’ve made these smaller, less obvious effects my focus. I explore the work of artists and poets who help us understand how the smallest changes to the environment can signal large-scale damage.

They build on a crucial legacy left by Victorian observers of the natural world who emphasized the need to pay careful attention to the tiny details of our surroundings.

Observant Victorians

No one was more insistent on the importance of looking closely at the ordinary and the everyday than the 19th-century art critic and social thinker John Ruskin.

Many contemporary artists have picked up the baton, showing how three very ordinary species from the natural world – dandelions, fireflies and lichens – can stimulate our imagination and make us think about climate change in new ways.

Today, British artist Edward Chell wants us to think about the damage done to these exiled weeds. He picks dandelions and other wild flowers on Britain’s motorway verges – micro-habitats choking with pollutants that nonetheless sustain diverse vegetation.

Using a silhouette drawing technique borrowed from the late 18th century, he draws the plant in outline and fills it with a mixture of ink and dust taken from the motorway. His images show the beautiful fragility of roadside weeds. But they’re also records of toxicity, made with the residue of the internal combustion engine: unburned hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides and particulate matter.

The jagged edges of the dandelion have a starring role in his series. But for Chell, the flower no longer symbolizes sentimentality and innocence, as it did in the Victorian era; instead, it’s mutated into a chilling commentary on roadside pollution.

The magic of fireflies

In a threatened world, nature exerts a nostalgic pull. For many Americans, thoughts of fireflies transport them to the long, warm summer evenings of childhood.

Fireflies enjoy a double life: By day, they are unremarkable, dull-brown insects; by night, they are captivating sparks that dance together.

To stand here is to experience infinity. It recalls the extraordinary beauty, yet fragility, of our natural environment.

And then you might wonder: When did I last see fireflies?

Fireflies have become increasingly uncommon – victims of habitat loss, pesticides and light pollution. Kusama’s project, involving so many dancing electric dots of light, may be understood as a deeply ironic one.

The sagacity of lichen

It’s not just artists who give significance to the small and overlooked.

Art historians can direct our attention to something we take for granted.

Mid-Victorian paintings are best known for their depictions of modern life, for dramatizing the personal side of historical events and for introducing us to stunning landscapes.

John Everett Millais’ 1852 painting ‘A Huguenot on St Bartholomew’s Day Refusing to Shield Himself from Danger by Wearing the Roman Catholic Badge.’Manson and Woods, Ltd.

But I suggest viewers concentrate on the apparently insignificant in these works; examine and think about the lichen that clings to rocks, tree trunks and walls in paintings like Millais’ “A Huguenot” or Brett’s “Val d'Aosta.”

The very lichen that was painted in the mid-19th century likely contained traces of the substances that would destroy it.

For lichen is – as the Victorians came to realize – a bellwether for a polluted climate. Too much pollution near a big industrial city, and it disappears from tree trunks and stones.

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Some of the earliest applications of photography came in the fields of archaeology and botany. Pictured is a photograph from botanist Anna Atkins’ Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions (1843).